Rarely have the leading UK film critics been so unanimous - they all say 5x2 (Cinq Fois Deux), by French director Francois Ozon, is some kind of masterpiece.

All I can say is, ugh, I don't think so. It's ugly, repellant and banal.

Telling the story of marriage in reverse order, starting with the divorce and ending with the first encounter, it takes the fashionable mode of offering no character to engage with. Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi does her best to make the Marion character believable, but there's too much left unsaid and unexplained, as if we are supposed to fill in all the blanks from our own experience. Well for a start, my idea of love and sex is that it can be joyful, not the torture it seems to be for everybody here.

If the all-too graphic scene of violent sex near the start makes you want to leave the cinema, just go, because nothing that follows can redeem or justify it, not even the kitsch Italian songs including two or three by Paulo Conte.

Hard to believe this is by the same director who made Under The Sand (2001); starring Charlotte Rampling and Bruno Cremer, that really was a classic.

Last edited by Charlie on Mon Mar 21, 2005 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks for the warning. Francois Ozon also made "Huit Femmes" (Eight Women) a couple of years ago. This is a good Agatha Christie-type drawing-room who-dunnit with Dennis Potterish musical interludes, with an all female cast (the leading French stage and cinema actresses), and a 1950's photographic colour and charm. It also has a lovely version of "Il n'ya pas d'amour heureux", which had just also been recorded by Youssou N'Dour. I might have seen 5X2 on the strength of this one.

If you've not seen it, check if it's on rental; it'll make up for the disappointment of 5X2. I can't guarantee you'll like it as much as I did, but I'm sure you won't want to walk out.